Customer Agreement Considerations for Micro-Grids in Sub-Saharan Africa

This agreement serves as a contract between the developer and the customers the micro-grid will serve, outlining the terms and conditions of service. The agreement's content is critical in establishing a reliable and scalable business model that provides returns commensurate with the associated risk. Effective customer agreements are essential for building trust in rural communities served by micro-grids. These communities often have limited prior experience with electrification, and the micro-grid's power is typically more expensive on a per-kilowatt-hour basis than that available to utility grid-tied customers in urban areas. Therefore, understanding and communicating the factors that drive this cost difference is critical. As individual developers grow beyond pilot projects to tens or hundreds of micro-grids, effective customer agreements become essential to streamlining organizational systems. Customer management systems that work for a small number of micro-grids can become overwhelming as the number of customers increases from hundreds to thousands. Investments in strong customer agreements can improve the bottom line through increased retention rates and average revenue per customer. The customer agreement's role in scaling spans individual micro-grids, company-level scaling, and industry-wide needs. To address barriers to providing reliable and affordable power to remote communities through micro-grid deployment, the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) has developed the Quality Assurance Framework (QAF). This framework seeks to address the need for stronger customer agreements that support industry efforts to scale and expand access to modern energy services. Several active developers in sub-Saharan Africa have made progress with customer agreement design, but many systems still operate with simple verbal agreements. Conversations with stakeholders from government, nonprofits, and the private sector have identified a need for stronger customer agreements that support industry efforts to scale and expand access to modern energy services. The customer agreement's content is critical in establishing a reliable and scalable business model that provides returns commensurate with the associated risk. The agreement's content includes plans, pricing, and devices, as well as roles and responsibilities, reliability and availability, safety, and additional elements to consider. Effective customer agreements can improve the bottom line through increased retention rates and average revenue per customer, and are essential for building trust in rural communities served by micro-grids.